IHF Awards

This award is open to IHF Members, their member hospitals, and health service providers who demonstrate excellence or outstanding achievements in advancing clinical quality. The nominated clinical project, programme, or service will demonstrate measurable evidence of success in improving clinical care. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Developing and promoting new or improved services or models of care with quality and patient safety as a core objective and with measurable evidence of success;
• Building a workplace culture of patient safety at all organizational levels;
• Enhancing workforce education on the importance of patient engagement and empowerment;
• Improving quality of care for underserved or at-risk patient populations;
• Improving the application of quality and patient safety principles to reduce preventable infections, medication, and procedural errors.

The recipient of this award will demonstrate an innovative clinical project, programme, or service with measurable evidence of success in enhancing clinical care.

This award is open to IHF Members, their member hospitals, and health service providers who demonstrate excellence or outstanding achievements in ensuring the wellbeing of healthcare workers through innovative projects, programmes, or services. Achievements should be measurable and can be in the areas of staff recruitment, retention, engagement, and workplace environment. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Taking an active, creative, and innovative role in retaining staff;
• Ensuring a high level of staff engagement and job satisfaction for clinical and administrative workers;
• Demonstrating success in interventions which support staff wellbeing and combat staff burnout;
• Promoting the physical and mental health of healthcare workers.

The recipient of this award will demonstrate their commitment to, and success in, promoting the wellbeing of healthcare workers through innovative and impactful initiatives.

This award is open to IHF Members, their member hospitals or hospital systems who demonstrate measurable success in operational outcomes and efficiencies. The nominations will be a project, programme, or service. Measures could include productivity, financial sustainability, increased access, improved patient satisfaction and engagement, employee satisfaction, and reduced employee turnover. A measurable and sustained track record is required. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Adapting transformational technologies improving patient flow and results;
• Advancing value-based healthcare demonstrating improved quality and safety of healthcare, while maintaining or reducing costs;
• Implementing new strategies to achieve higher workforce satisfaction, such as demonstrating frontline staff empowerment to identify and solve problems using continuous improvement techniques and data driven decision-making;
• Streamlining processes and eliminating waste and variation across care pathways, from admission to discharge and beyond, encouraging coordination and integration of care;
• Optimizing use of data to drive results, and/or improving cyber and digital security for hospital data.

The recipient of this award will demonstrate measurable success in operational outcomes and efficiencies through projects, programmes, or services.

This award is open to IHF Members, their member hospitals, and health service providers who demonstrate excellence or outstanding achievements in leadership and management. The nomination would be a project, programme or service which demonstrates success in leadership and management. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Strengthening governance mechanisms, enabling all staff to be heard by senior leadership;
• Creating a culture that fosters clinical and non-clinical staff engagement and strengthens collaboration;
• Achieving major breakthroughs in innovative care delivery;
• Demonstrating improvements in patient-reported outcomes and patient experience.

The recipient of this award will demonstrate the impact of their projects or programmes, and how their leadership and management practices have contributed to positive outcomes.

This award is open to IHF Members, their member hospitals, and health service providers who demonstrate excellence or outstanding achievements in promoting low-carbon healthcare initiatives. This award will recognize hospitals that have made the most demonstrable progress in the last 12–18 months in key areas of sustainability strategy and implementation. Examples include:

• Reducing the environmental footprint of the hospital and ecosystem by optimizing the use of environmental resources;
• Building resilience to climate change impacts;
• Transforming to low-carbon care through operational services, processes and clinical practice;
• Engaging the staff to drive a culture of sustainability.

The recipient of this award will demonstrate a comprehensive and impactful approach to sustainable healthcare, with a focus on reducing carbon emissions, enhancing environmental responsibility, and contributing positively to the wellbeing of both the community and the environment.

This award is open to IHF Members, their member hospitals, and health service providers who demonstrate excellence or outstanding achievements in advancing social and environmental responsibility. The nominated programme will be implemented at organizational level (i.e. not in isolation in a unit or department). The programme will clearly demonstrate measurable impact in the three key areas of organizational sustainability strategy and delivery.

• Leadership and governance: efforts to ensure structures and practices are in place to promote leadership accountability and reporting, sustain the programme, engage and empower employees to act on responsibility issues, and act collaboratively across communities and with relevant stakeholders.
• Health, equity, and wellbeing: efforts to assess the vulnerabilities in communities to better target services, increase access to universal health coverage, deliver health and prevention services in an equity-based way that support mental and physical wellbeing, prevent ill health, and positively influence environmental and social determinants of health.
• Environmental impact: efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of an organization and ecosystem, build resilience to climate change impacts, and to transition to low-carbon care through operational services and clinical practice.

The recipient of this award will demonstrate an innovative programme with measurable impact in the three key areas of organizational sustainability strategy and delivery.

This award will recognize hospitals who demonstrate sustainability improvements within their organization using insights and guidance from the Sustainability Accelerator Tool (SAT). A key aspect is to be able to show how the SAT maturity assessment, core indicators and/or guidance to improve were used to support the hospitals’ sustainability strategies, actions, and reporting. Please find below a list of possible examples:

• SAT provided a comprehensive overview of your hospitals sustainability performance and helped draft a robust strategy.
• SAT allowed to provide key insights that enhanced reporting and buy-in from the board, key executives and other stakeholders.
• SAT provided insights on areas to focus and or include in future initiatives, such as community engagement, vulnerability assessments and/or addressing environmental and social determinants of health.
• SAT encouraged a more comprehensive measurement of your environmental impact such as carbon emissions, energy, and water consumption, and these insights were used to establish initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of your hospital.

Important note: At minimum, entrants must have completed the SAT maturity assessment and will only be considered for the award if they have an active and ongoing SAT subscription.